do I dare disturb the universe? -- Jack's NaPoWriMo Thread

I feel like every one of your poems is an analysis of an entirely different character, and its truly amazing how much life you breathe into these people.

Thanks, Clo =)

Unfortunately, this is terrible. And I'm getting a little behind. Blah.

#8 migraine

freshly-squeezed, bitter and raw, stinging
your eyeballs, ringing your braincells,
ripping up paradigms,
messing up rhymes and
torturingpunctuation;
this is the opposite of exultation.

ice-cream cognitive freeze:
pathways in irregular mandarin chinese.
some days you produce camembert
some days you get processed cheese.

Hey, you know what? At least it's someting =) Like NaNo, it can always be edited later. And the last two lines about cheese, I like a lot.

The cheese line was a good one =P

#9 a dickens of a time

dollars breed seeds into the hardworn ground
the antidote is slow like the incoming tide
and in the nowheres of states they buck
the trend with a thousand therapies
thick and thunderous
into the deep chasms of everywhere.

he is fifteen again, ready to wrestle the world
for every penny. in the sandy light
of the western beaches he makes a tidy
profit pickpocketing europeans.
sharing cells with frozen nights
and watching the sunset through rusted bars.

adolescent charm spins myriad tales
of hard times and bleak houses.
he manhandles the threshold of decency
in knifecold alleyways.
the blood keeps him warm.

Jack,

On 5,

#5 Let Us Be Lovers, We'll Marry Our Fortunes Together wrote:He smokes forty on the ferry
Gazing across the endless atlantic horizon;
Cramped like ants in the lower decks
The patrons build and kill dreams in card games.
Sweaty hammocks crawling with possibility
As they ride the wishboat to New York City.

This, I love. But the next poem, the rhythm dies out and becomes choppy. Which I think is one of the reasons it falls short. The rhythm comes back in the last three stanza, but it already threw me off, so...

And, then.

#6 the sins of greed and lust wrote:The skyscrapers are old furniture:
accepted monoliths with staircases into
the gutters of heaven. On the 34th floor
he finds his pale-green door
and collapses like a wounded soldier
on his wife's conservative decor.

Love it!

And, #7 a man's best friend is bloody genius, I tell you. I adore it so. It reminds me somewhat of a cross between Steinbeck and Hemingway--very Hills Like White Elephants meets East of Eden.

#9 a dickens of a time wrote:he is fifteen again, ready to wrestle the world
for every penny. in the sandy light
of the western beaches he makes a tidy
profit pickpocketing europeans.
sharing cells with frozen nights
and watching the sunset through rusted bars.

adolescent charm spins myriad tales
of hard times and bleak houses.
he manhandles the threshold of decency
in knifecold alleyways.
the blood keeps him warm.

Love it. Love the title.


Ta,
Cal.

Yeah, that last one was gold.

Nice stuff, mate.

Consider changing the title to "Do I dare to eat a peach?". It really captures the pleasurable, delicious quality of your poetry.

You guys are too kind.

#10 a year in the making

i.

languid. flagging. docile. dragging
forgotten antiquity into the shape
and feel of this aging day;
traced and placed, familiar face,
edges raw and memorable.
it is yesteryear in the veneer
of today.

the seconds bleed away vitality
and forget the colour of reality.
present time is exhausted. it peels back the clock,
cracking the new paint away.
the months become milliseconds, meaningless,
I am weak with the similarity.

the air is curiously grey and dead.
I am in an old photograph
buried underground.

Much as I'd love for you to go out with a bang in the form of that fantastic poem (best yet?) you need to keep going, man!